How to install and configure Xen® Virtualization in Linux/Centos/Redhat – Graphical Mode Step by Step

I think every body knows What is Xen®?. Now i am directly going to the topic of the installation and configuring the Xen Virtualization in Centos. CentOS is a free operating system based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). It exists to provide a free enterprise class computing platform and strives to maintain 100% binary compatibility with its upstream distribution.

So no worry about getting the CentOS for the installation.

Requirements:

Xen 3.0 rpm for Installation.

Xen – Kernel for booting

Virt-Manager for Managing the Xen Virtualization

Virt-Viewer for getting the console of the Guest opertating system.

This guide only for the person that who didn’t installed the Xen and Xen – Kernel during installation of CentOS. If you have installed the CentOS with Xen already, you scan skip to Step 5.

Step 3: From the above, confirmed that the Xen and Xen – kernel haven’t installed on the machine, So you can install it using the following command, i used the YUM Repo for installing RPM’s. Include the Virt-Manager and Virt-Viewer also.

Step 4: Once the Xen and Xen – Kernel installed, Make the changes in the /etc/grub.conf to boot the Xen – Kernel by default. Other wise You have to select the Menu from Splash screen during booting. So edit /etc/grub.conf.

The following one is before editing the /etc/grub.conf. You can look at the default field = 1, it means by default it will boot from the second kernel ie Normal El5 Kernel. Numbers starts from 0,1 and so on.

Step 5: Reboot the Server, As from the above the server should boot with Xen – Kernel. Check it using the following command.

[root@node01 ~]# uname -r2.6.18-238.el5xen

Step 6: Now confirmed, you can start the Virt Manager for Managing the Xen Virtualization.

[root@node01 ~]# virt-manager

Step 7: The above picture shows the Virtual Machine Manager of CentOS Host, both qemu and Xen are in disconnected state. Now Right click on the Xen and click Connect. After clicking connect you will get the following window stating Xen is Active and Domain-0 is running.

Now the CentOS host is ready for creating the full virtualization guest,click New on the Virtual Machine Manager to start creating guest os.